


Discovery of the Century

by DepressingGreenie



Series: Tiny Reverse Bang 2020 [2]
Category: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Marvel 616, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: 616/EMH Fusion, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Commander Rogers, Exo-Suit Iron Man armour, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash, Science Fiction, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, captain tony stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25419292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DepressingGreenie/pseuds/DepressingGreenie
Summary: The crew of the USS Avengers come across someone else while searching for their lost crew-mate.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Tiny Reverse Bang 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1836148
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47
Collections: 2020 Cap/Iron Man Tiny Reverse Bang





	Discovery of the Century

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [TRB Art 2020 - Crash/Found](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25291300) by [felisnocturna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/felisnocturna/pseuds/felisnocturna). 



> **Code Name:** Nomad ~ (Round 1)
> 
> This was heavily inspired by both earth 616 canon ([Avengers Vol 1 #4](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Avengers_Vol_1_4) in particular) and Earth's Mightiest heroes. I borrowed some of the dialog from both (with some slight changes) and bits of the fight scenes after Steve wakes up from the ice.

“Who would think that finding someone so large and… and glowing… would be so _hard_?” Janet grumbles, spinning around in her seat.

Beside her Hank huffs, folding his arms across his chest. “We should give up. It’s obvious that Banner doesn’t want to be found. We have better things we should be spending our valuable time and resources on” the scientist says.

“Take care how you speak, Pym. Dr Banner is unwell and is not himself, have some compassion.” Thor says, levelling a glare at Hank. “He is one of our own, and is therefore our responsibility.”

“I don’t see how. Look, he quit. We have to respect that.” Hank says “Tony, you at least have to agree with me.”

“No, Hank. I agree with Janet and Thor.” Tony says. “Bruce’s been… well, he’s been struggling since the accident, and I know he hasn’t been the easiest to be around but he is one of us. He’s our friend. And I am not about to leave anyone behind, Hank. Not on my watch.”

Everyone settles down, eyes on their equipment, looking for Banner. Tony drums his fingers on the armrest of the Captain’s chair, worry rolling nauseatingly in his gut. He had to hope that Bruce was okay. That somewhere out there, wherever he was, he was safe.

The scanner when it gives off a sharp ping. Tony sits up straighter in his seat. “What’ve we got?” he asks.

“Scanners picked up a life sign… but it’s faint” Hank says. The scientist’s hands fly across the panel working to narrow down the signal as much as possible. “The best I can get is a small ping in the quartz dunes in the planet’s North quadrant”

“Okay. It’ll do” Tony says, getting up from his chair.

“Is it Bruce?” Janet asks. “If this is gonna be some sort of evil snow-quartz worm I am going to be so pissed” she says.

“I don’t see who else it could be, the planet is uninhabited. And Hrelin-XI doesn’t have ‘evil snow-quartz worms’, Jan” Tony says, biting back a smile at the memories of the worm on Kalar II. “C’mon. Let’s go check it out. Thor? With me. I want the rest of you in the Quin shuttle”

“Aye, Captain” Thor calls.

The team loads up onto the shuttle. Tony listens to Jan she calls out the pre-flight checks as he steps into his exo-suit.

He does a quick test of his suit before he turns to Thor. “Ready?” he ask.

“Verily” Thor exclaims, raising his hammer, grinning brightly.

Tony kicks off into the air and exits the USS Avenger, Thor following close behind. He lets out a whoop of excitement as he enters the atmosphere of Hrelin-XI. He always loved the feeling of free falling in the suit gave him.

When he enters the planet’s stratosphere he pulls up, slowing his descent. He lands on one of the bright red mining stations hovering over the planet’s surface, and takes off his helmet. Thor lands beside him.

Tony looks out over the horizon, watching as Hrelin-XI’s suns slowly set. Huge yellow clouds of Valrenium Calsate gas swirl around the sky in Hrelin-XI’s vicious winds, mesmerising in its patterns. The light reflects across the icy quartz sand dunes below.

“JARVIS, scan for the life form”

“Certainly, Captain.” The AI responds.

His head piece flashes green, and Tony switches it on. A grid falls over his vision, stats rolling on the right on the screen. He turns around looking for the marker.

And there it is, to his right. A little red tag flashes on the grid. They were closer than he had thought. Tony walks across the mining station’s deck towards the marker, squinting into the distance to see if he could spot anything on the surface.

He shields his eyes from the suns and he reaches the end of the deck. And sure enough he spots… something. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at. Something large and blue was sticking out of the dunes. It almost looked to be a wing or sail of a ship. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was indeed a ship. And the life sign was originating from it.

“Thor? I got a visual on a downed ship” Tony calls out. He couldn’t quite make out the markings on it the thing, it almost looked like a white star, but it could also be damage. He hopes that wasn’t Bruce. That Bruce wasn’t in that wreckage, hurt or dying.

“Aye. I see to” Thor says as he comes up beside him, frowning at the ship in the distance.

Tony opens the comms to the shuttle. “Captain Stark to Quin-1. We have a visual on a downed ship, unknown origin and make. Life-sign within but faint. Medevac maybe requited. Exercise caution moving forward. We don’t know if they’re a friend.”

“Quin-1 to Captain. Understood. Medevac on standby” Jan responds.

Tony puts on his helmet and turns to Thor. The Asgardian gives him a nod and the set off towards the ship.

Landing on the ship it difficult, the ship had already sunk far into the quartz sand and threatens to sink even lower. Thinking on his feet Tony pulls a cable from his suit and looks for a safe place to attach it. He drops down on his knees and brushes aside the clear sand frozen to the ship. When he’s secured the end he passes it over to Thor. “Could you run this up to one of the mining stations, we need to anchor this ship before we can go in”

Thor flies off in a rush to secure the other end.

As Tony waits he grabs a handful of the sand. He rolls the grains in his armoured hands, breaking the ice from the quartz grains, before letting it all slip between his fingers.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Thor waving for his attention. He turns and signals to Thor that he’s seen him. Thor signals that the line is secure.

Tony activates the suits magma blade and starts cutting them a way into the ship. Within five minutes he has made an entrance, and he and Thor make their way inside.

The ship is old. Very old. Almost all the tech in the ship Tony’s only ever seen within museums or old archives. Ships like these haven’t been produced in over 100 years or more. Given the state of the equipment this ship had been crashed here for just as long. Most of the ship was in an advanced state of rust or had been fully corroded away. The doors are brittle under their hands, braking off and crumbling as they attempt to open them. Salt deposits line the walls and ceiling. All the surfaces have been weathered smooth under the sand.

There was no way Bruce was here. This ship couldn’t have been flown here recently and as far as he could tell there was no signs of any other ships or a crash nearby. Tony pushes down his disappointment and tries to focus on what _could_ be down here.

The life sign is still faint. But it could also just be small. Maybe was a sand snipe? But it was a little too cold for them. Hell, maybe it was a sand worm, but deep below. No, that wouldn’t be right. The signal was only a short ways in front of them.

They make it to the main bridge, the life sign was just on the other side. He gives Thor a nod, readying his weapons. The break open the door and make their way in slowly, eying everything carefully as the move in on the life sign. The bridge is full of sand, ice and twisted metal.

Thor and Tony come to a stop at a huge pile of icy sand near the front of the bridge. Tony drops down and starts pushing away the sand carefully. Thor stands protectively over his shoulder, his hammer ready, watching carefully for any movement in the sand.

Tony’s fingers brush against something. When it makes no move to attack him he quickly brushes aside the rest of the sand. He nearly recoils in horror when he finds a frozen man.

“Captain?” Thor gasps, dropping down beside him to help him shift the rest of the sand on the man.

“This is… It’s impossible, but the life signs are coming from him.” Tony says, double checking his scans just to be sure. “It’s not a parasite either. The man is alive” How did he get here? Who was he?

“By the Norns!” Thor exclaims.

“We have to get him aboard the Avenger” Tony says, tucking his hands under the man’s shoulders.

“The exposure outside may do him harm, Captain” Thor says.

“It’s a risk we are going to have to take. The Quin-1 is on standby outside.” Tony says. “Help me life him”

Together they extract the man from the ship. Getting him aboard the Quin-1 was a little harder, but they manage it as a team. They set the man on one of the beds at the back of the shuttle.

Hank gets to work trying to access the man and his health. This would be a lot easier if they had a doctor with them. But he’d been hoping that they would find Bruce before he would have to send in a request for a new doctor. Hank wasn’t a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, but he did okay. They had a few student doctors aboard the USS Avenger, but Bruce was the only one with the full education.

Tony walks over to the man, unable to help his curiosity. Now that they were out of the downed ship he could take a good look at the man.

He was handsome, he had the chiselled features you saw in classic art. The man’s wheat blond hair, while frozen, looked so soft. There were laugh lines around the man’s eyes, and something deep within Tony wanted to know the stories behind them, to know what made him laugh, wants to hear the man’s laugh himself. Tony stops himself from reaches out to feel how soft the man’s cheeks are.

“Oh, he so frozen!” Janet cries, feeling the man’s temperature. “How could he still be alive?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he crashed recently” Hank says, approaching the man with a medi-scanner. “Question is: Who is he?”

“He looks to be wearing some sort of tattered uniform” Thor says, the Asgardian’s voice booming in the small space of the shuttle.

Tony’s eyes shift from the man’s face down to his chest. The man was wearing a torn dark blue uniform, on his chest was a large white star in a thin white ring. There were three while lines on each side of the man’s chest that went from the star to over the man’s shoulders. But as curious as Tony was about the uniform, he couldn’t help but notice the body beneath the uniform that could be seen through the torn fabric. It’s wasn’t just the man’s face that looked like it was carved from stone.

Hank passes the scanner to Janet to examine the man’s clothes, bringing Tony’s attention back to where it _should_ be. “It’s looks to be one of the old Federation uniforms, but I’ve never seen one quite like this.” Hank says.

“Why is he wearing such an old uniform? Those where discontinued over 200 years ago. Why was he wearing them when he crashed?” Janet says “Oh god, Tony! It can’t be…”

“Don’t be silly, Jan. There’s no way” Hank says, his features twisting into a frown. “It’s impossible”

“I think Jan is right, Hank” Tony says, “It’s Commander Rogers”. He can hardly believe it.

“Are we sure?” Thor asks. “Can this really be the once mighty Commander?

There is a huge chance that they could be wrong. What are the chances this man could actually be the long lost Commander Rogers? The man looks exactly like the stories, the holos, like everything showed him to. If this wasn’t the Commander, there were an incredible look alike who just happened to be wearing the right clothes, or a shape shifter with a penchant for old federation heroes. Neither seemed likely.

“Look at the proud star on the man’s chest. The stark red stripes down his flanks all the way to the end of his pant legs” Tony says, smoothing out the man’s clothes and trying to find any form of identification on the man. He pointedly doesn’t take this as an opportunity to feel if the man’s chest was as hard as it looked.

The man had no identification on him. But his pockets were full of old equipment, all which could be dated to the time period that the Commander was lost. It was becoming more and more probable that this was the Commander.

“Hey guys, he’s waking up!” Janet calls.

Tony looks up at the man’s face, watching was the man’s long lashes flutter against his icy cheeks.

They all crowd closer around the man laying across the bed.

“Is his brain okay?” Janet asks, her voice full of concern. And that was a valid question. There was no telling how much damage could be done to the man’s head after having been frozen for over 200 years.

The man blinks his eyes open for a second before they fall shut again.

Hank grabs the man’s shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. “Commander, are you alright?” The scientist asks.

“BUCKY!” The man shouts, shooting upright on the bed. He swings his arm out wide, catching Hank unaware. Hank falls hard to the floor.

“HANK!” Janet screams. “Thor, Tony! Stop him! He’s gone mad!”

The man kicks out, clipping Thor across the jaw. Thor staggers back, an arm raised to shield his face from further blows.

“Whoa, whoa… wait. Calm down.” Tony says, putting up his hands in a peaceful gesture. “Everything’s-” His words are cut off with a painful gasp as the man drops down of the table and kicks it towards Tony, pinning him to the wall of the shuttle. Spots dance within his vision and the world greys around the edges. He lays his hands flat against the table with a groan as it is push harder against his chest. He was thankful he had not removed his armoured suit. “You’re safe. You’re with friends. No one’s going to harm you.” he says softly, trying to get the words through to the man.

“Who do you work for? What are you? …Some sort of Hydra android?” The man asks. “Where’ve you taken me? Where’s Bucky?”

There was very little question left in Tony’s mind of it this was the Commander. Twice now he has called out for Bucky, the Commander’s legendary right hand.

“Stand back, I’ll get him” Hank shouts, activating his quantum phase suit. The man’s size grows in the small space. With his enlarged hands, Hank reaches to the man, attempting to grab him.

“Hank, no!” Tony shouts. Attacking the man was not going to help them in the slightest. The man was obviously very afraid and confused, violence was only going to add to that.

“You’re big pal, I’ll give you that.” The Commander says. “But I’ve fought bigger. And I will take you down, just as I’ve taken them down.”

Hank charges at the Commander, but the man falls on to his back and kiss out his legs, catching Hank in the gut and tossing him over his shoulders.

“The man fights with the fire sung of in legends!” Thor says. “But not to worry. He’s no match for an Asgardian”

The Commander catches Thor’s arms as he swings at him, ducking underneath the arc of the hammer. The man twists on his feet and ducks, throwing Thor over his shoulder into Hank. Hank and Thor land in a pile on the floor, groaning.

Tony watches in awe. The man was an incredible fighter, living up to the legends Tony had heard growing up and more.

Tony shakes himself and works on pushing the bed away from him, trying to get himself free.

Janet sets her phasor to stun and starts firing at the Commander. The man dodges every shot. Tony had never seen someone so light on their feet, it was like the man was dancing. In a few short steps, the man was right in front of Janet. She is disarmed in a quick flash of moment, the phasor on the other side of the room.

The man has a clear path to the door and takes it.

With the bed no longer tapping him, Tony pursues him, careful setting over his team sprawled out over the floor. The Quin-1 is small and the path out is easy to figure out. Tony just hopes to stop the man before he can escape.

But he has no such luck. Commander Rogers makes to the exterior door well before him and releases the lock.

“Wait! NO!” Tony cries, lunging after him. But he was too late. The man had jumped from the shuttle. Tony rushes to the door just in time to see the man land on the sand dunes below with a tight roll and make a run for the downed ship.

Tony takes off after him. He was gaining on the man, but even without an exo-suit the Commander was fast.

He pursues the man through the ship, ducking and weaving through the numerous corridors. He was at a disadvantage here. The man obviously knew the ship well, and was incredibly agile. Tony was finding it hard to manoeuvre the suit through the path the man was taking, clearly trying to shake him of his tail. Tony grits his teeth and doesn’t lose him, pushing himself and the suit to the limit.

The chase comes to an end when they reach the bridge.

Coming to a sudden stop the Commander looks around the space before rushing towards the pile of sand they extracted him from. The man drops to his knees and starts digging frantically.

For a horrifying moment, Tony almost thinks the man was seeking to bury himself again.

From the sand the man pulls out his shield. The Commander’s legendary weapon. Tony sucks in an awed breath at the sigh.

The man turns on him, shield raised. “Get back! I don’t know who you are or what you want with me… But you’re fresh outta luck” The man says.

Tony holds his hands up and steps out of the suit. “Armistice” He says calmly. “We’re friends. Were with the United Federation of Planets. Just like you.”

“I- I don’t understand” the Commander says, pulls his shield closer to himself.

“Neither do we, Commander. But If I were to guess you were caught in some sort of suspended animation.” He says.

“That’s impossible. That can’t-…” The man stammers “…right?”

“Yet here we are” he says, reaching out a hand to the man slowly. “Come with us, let us help you. We will take you to the neared federation planet, you have my word”

The man stares at his offered hand, looking conflicted and confused. And scared, very scared. Tony’s heart aches for the man.

“Okay” the man says, taking his hand. “I-…” the man looks around the derelict bridge “I don’t think there are any other options I can take anyway… I guess” The guy bites his lips and his shoulders sag. “How long?” he asks.

Tony’s heart feels like it is bleeding out into his chest. “Over 200 years” he says.

“Oh” he says, wobbling dangerously on his feet, his strength seemly leaving him in that one breath.

Tony rushes forwards and wraps his arm around the man’s waist. “Let’s get you abroad my ship, Commander”

“Steve” The man whispers. “Call me Steve. I doubt I am a Commander anymore”

“Only if you will call me Tony” he says.

“I- but” Steve begins to sputter, but Tony stops him.

“You either call me Tony or I call you Commander. Fair’s fair."

“Okay, Tony” the man says.

**Author's Note:**

> When I stared this I thought I was only going to manage 500 words. But I just couldn't stop writing 😂
> 
> I chose not to go with secret identities because I didn't think it would fit in this universe. And I went with Commander Rogers over Captain America because: A) I figured it would make more sense within the universe... I don't see Starfleet having a Captain America, B) The object in the art made me think more of Commander Rogers, particularly because of the lines around the star.
> 
> A lot of research went into this. There were times I researched something and was like &*^% it, i'll do it anyway. So there are discrepancies in the science behind parts of this fic. Particularly with the quartz sand. Apparently quartz doesn't really freeze. But screw it, it can be combined with something else that does. _//comic book science and hand wavy SciFi//_  
>  ANYWAY, [this](https://i.imgur.com/oxMzYLh.jpg) and [this](https://i.imgur.com/yV3OD64.jpg) is what I was thinking the quartz sand would look like (I thought it was very close to the art, and one of the reasons I didn't want to find something else)
> 
> ~✨~  
>   
> ⋆Other sites I'm on are linked in [my profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DepressingGreenie/profile).  
>   
> ~✨~


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